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I. ENGINEERING EDUCATION—A 
UNIFIED vs. A DIVIDED PROCESS. 


i THE=OUESTION OF A LONGER 
ENGINEERING CURRICULUM. 


oe 


THE SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF 
ENGINEERING EDUCATION 


JUNE, 1927 


THE SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF 
ENGINEERING EDUCATION 


BOARD OF INVESTIGATION AND COORDINATION 


CHARLES F. Scott, Chairman Joun H, DunLAP (Deceased) 
FreDErIC L. BisHop, Secretary FRANK AYDELOTTE 

MortTiMer HE. CooLry CaRL E. SEASHORE 

DuGaLD C. JACKSON FREDERICK E. TURNEAURE 
Frep W. McNair (Deceased) DExTER S. KIMBALL 


and the President of the Society, ex-officio 
(PERLEY F. WALKER, ANDREY A, POTTER, 
GEORGE B. PEGRAM, and OrA M. LELAND, 
during their respective terms of office). 


STAFF OF THE INVESTIGATION 


~2eWILLIAM E. WICKENDEN, Director 
Harry P. HAMMOND, Associate Director SN 


OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF THE SOCIETY, 
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pa. 


OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF INVESTIGATION, 
Engineering Societies Building 
33 West 39th Street, New York, N. Y. 


Copies of the publications of the Board of Investigation and Coordi- 
nation may be obtained from 


THE LANCASTER PRESS, INC. 
Prince and Lemon Streets, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. 


SECOND REPORT OF THE 
BOARD OF INVESTIGATION 
AND COORDINATION 


SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF 
ENGINEERING EDUCATION! | ippspy 


€ 3 le j ; > 
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UNIVERSITY OF 1! 


CONTENTS 


Summary of Issues and Conclusions . . ...... 1 


Part I. Engineering Education—A Unified vs. a 
TIVIGGGAE LOCESS RTM ea otra ah, Hee 


_— Part II. The Question of a Longer Engineering Cur- 
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© 
. Copyright, 1927 
Or, by 


The Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education 


<= (Contents may be quoted with reference to the source) 


FOREWORD 


This report, which will later be embodied in a report of 
more comprehensive character, is based upon materials which. 
have been assembled and studies made in a general investiga- 
tion ‘‘ directed to a study of the objects of engineering educa- 
tion and the fitness of the present-day curricula,’’ which has 
been conducted by the Society for the Promotion of Engi- 
neering Education. These activities have been carried out 
under the general direction of the Board of Investigation and 
Coordination and under the immediate supervision of the Staff, 
as named elsewhere. 


In setting forth the objectives of the investigation, the 
Board stated its desire to clarify the educational functions 
and responsibilities of the colleges of engineering, by indicat- 
ing the extent to which the program of engineering education 
serves as a collegiate type of training employing science and 
technology as its principal media; and to what extent it serves 
as a definite professional discipline; also to indicate how engi- 
neering curricula may be coordinated more effectively with 
the needs of industry and the requirements of engineering 
practice. 


The present report is concerned with the objectives men- 
tioned above and is presented as a contribution to the impor- 
tant problems which confront the engineering colleges. While 
the decisions must rest with individual institutions, the Board 
offers its own consensus of opinion with regard to the issues 
considered.and expresses its views with regard to the situation 
as a whole. 


SECOND REPORT OF THE BOARD OF INVESTI- 
GATION AND COORDINATION 


I. ENGINEERING EDUCATION—A UNIFIED VS A 
DIVIDED PROCESS 

II. THE QUESTION OF A LONGER ENGINEERING 
CURRICULUM 


Summary of Issues and Conclusions.*—This report deals 
with two distinct but related issues which now confront the 
colleges of engineering. The first and more fundamental is 
the alternative between a unified and a divided educational 
process; the second is the question of the normal length of the 
engineering curriculum. 

I. A unified educational process implies a curriculum in 
which humanistic, scientific and technological studies. are com- 
bined into an orderly whole, constituting a complete and self- 
contained branch of higher education under unity of super- 
vision. A divided process implies a distinct pre-engineering 
curriculum under separate auspices and an engineering cur- 
riculum set up on purely technical lines, a plan corresponding 
to the present educational scheme in law, medicine and den- 
tistry. 

The Board is of the opinion that the engineering colleges in 
general may best fulfill their purpose by providing under 
their own auspices an educational program which is complete 
in itself and which may be entered direct from the secondary 
schools; that this type of program supplies the norm in engi- 
neering education; but that facilities should be afforded for 
the admission to advanced standing of students who desire a 
more extended general academic training before entering upon 
the study of engineering. | 

II. The issue concerning the length of the curriculum grows 
out of the accepted principle that more than four years of 
preparation are needed to equip men for creative leadership’ 

* Note: Except where specifically noted, the term engineering educa- 
tion is employed in this report to denote a college program leading to a 
degree. It is recognized that there are other important divisions of 
engineering education, in its comprehensive sense, which lie beyond the 
scope of this discussion. 

1 


2 REPORT OF THE BOARD OF 


in the engineering profession. The alternative lies between 
a longer prescribed program, to be pursued in full or in part 
by all students, and a normal undergraduate program as a 
base with a variety of supplementary programs to fit different 
needs and preferences. 

The Board is of the opinion that it is advisable to preserve 
the usual distinction between undergraduate and post-gradu- 
ate programs and that the undergraduate program should be 
self-contained and lead to a degree. Opportunity should be 
afforded and encouragement given to students of promise to 
extend their formal training by means appropriate to their 
aptitude, ability and choice of a career, such as the voluntary 
election of additional humanistic studies, the pursuit of post- 
graduate study in a fully qualified institution, or through 
orderly studies pursued in conjunction with engineering ex- 
perience. Four years is regarded as the normal] length of the 
undergraduate program. In many cases this program may 
be divided advantageously into two stages under the same 
supervision and both reasonably self-contained, in order to 
provide an intermediate goal and facilitate a selective process 
of admission to the upper years. 


PART I. ENGINEERING EDUCATION—A UNIFIED VS A 
DIVIDED PROCESS 


Purposes of Proposals to Divide the Curriculum.—Those 
who challenge the present status of the engineering colleges 
and their self-contained educational program usually pro- 
pose a segregation of the program into two distinct parts, the 
first a general academic training under non-engineering aus- 
pices, and the second a strictly technical curriculum in engi- 
neering, comparable to those in law and medicine. This pro- 
posal is made principally by educationists on abstract grounds, 
but ig echoed occasionally by engineers and industrialists. 
The intent of these proposals is to include engineering educa- 
tion in a general movement: 

To raise the cultural level of the professions ; 


To sift all students to more homogeneous standards before 
admission to professional courses ; 


INVESTIGATION AND COORDINATION 3 


To postpone the final choices of departmental or professional 
specialization ; 

To make the arts college, or a similar unit, the central 
feature in university organization and the vestibule to all 
specialized instruction ; 

To extend secondary education, either in or outside the 
universities, by two years; 

To professionalize the advanced instruction in all academic 
departments ; 

To transfer all general introductory instruction to junior 
institutions. 

The critics of the present unified program of the engineer- 
ing colleges seldom fail to point to the examples of a divided 
educational process in legal, medical, dental and theological 
education, and to advocate that engineering education should 
be organized on the same plan in order to maintain high 
standing as a branch of professional education. 

Criticism of Assumptions Underlying the Divided Pro- 
gram.—The assumption is commonly made that certain sub- 
jects are inherently cultural and others are not, and that any 
degree of professional orientation puts a program beyond the 
pale of ‘‘broad’’ education. These assumptions seem to be 
incidental to narrowly conventional definitions of culture. 
The engineer would maintain that culture cannot be restricted 
to the fine arts and personal graces, however desirable for the 
enrichment of life, but must be conceived equally in terms of 
insight into the social bearings of one’s calling, qualifications 
for efficient team-work with men of other callings, and the 
ability to invest one’s work with large social values. Culture, 
so conceived, ought not to be divorced from professional prep- 
aration. Granting that the present means to these ends in 
the engineering curriculum may be greatly improved, it does 
not follow that they would be bettered through dissociation, 
but rather that the cultural possibilities inherent in engineer- 
ing education should be more fully explored and developed. 

Another assumption is that it would be profitable to extend 
the student’s preparatory education by one or two years, and 
that more valid choices of specialization would result. Euro- 


~~ 


4 REPORT OF THE BOARD OF 


pean examples are often cited in support of this position, but 
the fact that this higher scholastic level is normally reached 
abroad at the age of eighteen is often overlooked. The age 
level and stage of mental maturity mark a more significant 
threshold to professionally oriented studies for the engineering 
student than the level of scholastic attainment. The urge to 
prepare for a technological career normally appears at or be- 
fore eighteen, rather than later, It is necessary to employ 
these natural enthusiasms of the student as incentives for a long 
and arduous formal training under the rising pressure of his 
instinctive urge to do, to create, to deal with tangible and 
realistic situations, to achieve economic independence, and to 
mate at a normal age. Furthermore, as a student, his time 
is subject to a law of diminishing returns, and a balance must 
be struck between formal education and training through 
actual experience. 

What the engineering student needs at the outset is not so 
much a widening of his intellectual horizons as a discipline in 
more intensive and directed methods of mental work; the 
broadening process is much more effective if distributed over 
the entire educational program. Experience indicates that 
a faulty perspective of cultural values on the part of the stu- 
dent is more readily corrected by sympathetic guidance in an 
engineering college with adequate provision for humanistic 
studies in the later years of its curriculum, than by consign- 
ing him to a probationary period in an arts college. 

A further assumption is that the engineering colleges would 
profit greatly by a preliminary sifting of their students. 
Doubtless they would if the sifting process were based on a 
valid trial of interest, aptitude and ability. However, the 
actual results of a divided program, in which another type of 
college is made to serve as a vestibule to engineering, have been 
seriously disappointing; it appears that the spark of enthu- 
siasm for engineering is quenched more often than it is kindled 
and that more students are diverted from engineering through 
prejudicial influences than are directed to it through con- 
structive educational guidance. This result is reflected in a 
marked shrinkage of enrollments and graduations in engineer- 


INVESTIGATION .AND COORDINATION 9) 


ing under the divided plan without indications of compensa- 
tory gains in the qualifications of graduates, when comparisons 
are made between educational programs of equal total length. 
The unified engineering program, on the other hand, offers 
tangible means of try-out and guidance to the student with 
tentative engineering objectives, and exacts little penalty of 
the student who transfers to another educational program 
within a reasonable period. 

Are Precedents in Education for Other Professions Rele- 
vant?—Technical training for the professions of law, medi- 
cine, dentistry and, to a less degree, the religious ministry, is 
distinctly set off from the processes of general education and 
all the first-class schools preparing for these professions re- 
quire from two to four years of general college work for en- 
tranee. The accentuated professional status of these schools 
and the long formal training in two stages are often upheld 
as examples to the engineering colleges. It is fitting to point 
out, however, that there are few if any parallels involved, 
apart from the common use of the term ‘‘ profession. ’’ 

First, there is striking dissimilarity of historical back- 
grounds. Education for law, medicine and dentistry had its 
origin in a system of pupillage or apprenticeship, out of which 
there developed an extensive system of private proprietary 
schools of strictly technical character. When these schools 
were later assimilated to a university status they preserved 
their separate identity through a sharp division of the edu- 
cational process into pre-professional and professional stages 
and in many eases established themselves on separate premises. 
In contrast, the type of engineering education which devel- 
oped in American colleges has been from its origin an inclu- 
sive educational process, instituted and directed by profes- 
sional educators, conforming to university standards, and more 
academic than vocational in type. While originating in dis- 
tinct polytechnic schools of university grade, it early gained 
recognition and place in institutions of the broadest academic 
character and has held and extended this position during a 
period of eighty years. 

The early curriculum in American colleges of engineering 


6 REPORT OF THE BOARD OF 


was conceived ag an alternative and a challenge to the tradi- 
tional classical discipline. Unlike the strictly professional 
disciplines mentioned above, engineering education has never 
been under the exclusive domination of a professional group ; 
non-engineers have shared equally with engineers in shaping 
its character and destiny. It is significant that early engi- 
neering curricula contained little of the technique of engi- 
neering practice, but emphasized an objective approach to the 
physical sciences with a view to the economic use of materials 
and sources of power in nature, as contrasted with a subjec- 
tive concern with the organization of systems of scientific 
knowledge. The science of engineering, rather than the art, 
has consistently dominated the engineering curriculum and 
even to this day the materials for a complete discipline for the 
practice of engineering have never been developed in syste- 
matic form. 

Second, the professions concerned are of dissimilar nature. 
Law, medicine, dentistry, and the religious ministry are 
strictly defined professions, based on a single level of responsi- 
bility and largely concerned with a service by individuals to 
individuals. Each has a distinctive social and legal status, 
and the first three have monopolistic rights and privileges 
under the law, which make restrictions ad to entrance a neces- 
sary protective measure for society. The auxiliary or sub- 
professional services related to these professions are in the 
hands of distinct groups and there are no open promotional 
routes from group to group. These conditions tend to. fix 
the forms of professional education in a series of standard 
patterns. In contrast, engineering—concerned with the eco- 
nomic use of materials and energy—is one of the very general 
functions in social economy, and not the exclusive function 
of a well-defined professional group. It has many levels of 
responsibility and no clear distinction has ever been drawn 
between the professional and the auxiliary levels. The pro- 
fession of engineering is self-constituted and traditionally 
open and inclusive in its organization. Promotional routes 
run through all grades of responsibility and legal restrictions 
as to entrance are relatively nominal. 


INVESTIGATION AND COORDINATION “ 


Third, the professions concerned have different relations to 
educational practice and policy. Law, medicine and dentistry 
are represented by strong central organizations, able to for- 
mulate and largely able to impose a strict educational policy 
in connection with legal restrictions on entrance to profes- 
sional standing. Within the last twenty years each of these 
professional bodies has had occasion to take strong protective 
measures in the face of a common problem, namely the flood- 
ing of the profession with the poorly educated and meagerly 
trained graduates of low-grade schools operated for profit. 
It was urgently necessary to raise the qualifying levels of 
general education, up-grade the standards of technical train- 
ing, bring the schools under university auspices, impose proper 
limitations of numbers and introduce selective processes to 
guarantee suitable personal qualifications of recruits. The 
chief means chosen to these ends has been the prescribing of 
two years or more of college work as a prerequisite of admis- 
sion to highly specialized professional curricula. The engi- 
neering colleges, on the other hand, have been almost wholly 
under university standards and educational auspices. The 
elements of general education included in engineering curri- 
cula have long been equivalent to those now prescribed for ad- 
mission to all but a few exceptional schools of law and medi- 
eine. There is no centralized body in the engineering profes- 
sion which could formulate and enforce a strict educational 
policy. Engineering enrollments have been relatively station- 
ary for many years and there has been no flooding of the pro- 
fession by an excess of recruits. In short, there has been no 
need of drastic reform in engineering education to protect or 
advance the interests of the profession, but only of healthy 
evolution. The profession has never undertaken to bring the 
educational process under its direction or control. 

Fourth, the division of an educational program implies that 
its professional stage is designed exclusively to fit students 
for definite professional careers. This is not the sole pur- 
pose of engineering education. As previously stated, en- 
gineering is actually one of the most general functions in social 
economy, and not exclusively a form of professional service. 


8 REPORT OF THE BOARD OF 


There would be no conceivable gain to society in making sci- 
entific technology the monopoly of a restricted professional 
group, aS in medicine and law, nor is there any inherent basis 
for limitation of numbers in technological education. On 
the contrary, there is positive social gain in the wide diffusion 
of men with engineering training throughout the entire range 
of industrial, commercial and public activity. The profes- 
sional element in engineering education, which gives it char- 
acteristic form and direction and marks it off definitely from 
a loosely grouped body of scientific studies, is of great value, 
but the undergraduate program is conceived not so much as a 
specific professional discipline as a professionally oriented 
form of education. It is significant that engineering train- 
ing qualifies graduates to function in the whole range of direc- 
tive responsibility in industry and public works; less than 
one-third remain permanently in predominantly technical 
work and less than one-tenth establish themselves in an indi- 
vidual professional capacity. Present tendencies relative to 
curricula, teaching processes, personnel practices, student ac- 
tivities and the enrichment of institutional life in the engi- 
neering colleges are in marked contrast to the practices of the 
strictly professional schools of law, medicine and dentistry, 
and testify to the ideal of serving the student as an individual 
rather than fitting him into a pre-determined professional 
mold. 

Present Status of the Engineering Colleges.—There are 
now more than one hundred and sixty colleges in the United 
States and Canada which offer complete engineering curricula 
leading to degrees. With two exceptions, Dartmouth and 
Columbia, these schools are all organized as undergraduate 
colleges, with or without associated post-graduate depart- 
ments. Only four institutions in all have organized their 
curricula in two distinct stages under separate direction. 
There are nineteen polytechnic institutes such as Rensselaer 
and Massachusetts Institute, and seven colleges of mines as 
Colorado (Golden) and Missouri (Rolla) which are devoted 
primarily to technological curricula and research and are com- 
mitted by tradition and circumstances to an integral educa- 


INVESTIGATION AND COORDINATION 9 


tional process. Forty-nine of the engineering colleges are in- 
cluded in the Land-Grant system established by the Morrill 
Act of 1862 with the intent of providing a liberal type of tech- 
nical education which should be widely accessible to the indus- 
trial classes and should aid in investing industrial pursuits 
with a professional quality. The Land-Grant colleges have 
unquestionably been a powerful influence tending to hold en- 
gineering education to its original ideal of a unified educa- 
tional process. Forty-two other institutions, exemplified by 
Lafayette and Swarthmore, are colleges devoted largely or 
exclusively to undergraduate studies and without distinct 
professional schools. Fifty-three engineering colleges, or 
slightly less than one third of the total, are included in insti- 
tutions with a university type of organization which provides 
for separate professional schools. 

Considerations of Educational Efficiency.—The following 
summary touches briefly on many of the more specific aspects 
of the problem: 

1. Preparatory Education.—The present tendency in the 
high schools is to sacrifice the type of intellectual formation 
requisite for rigorous analytical studies to a process of so- 
called enrichment and socialization of curricula. The engi- 
neering colleges now exert a corrective influence through dis- 
tinetive entrance requirements which would inevitably dis- 
appear if these colleges should lose direct touch with the high 
schools and act through the arts colleges as intermediaries. 
The result would be the loss of one or more years of valuable 
time to the student, and a certain diminution of the quota of 
students qualified to enter upon engineering studies. 

2. Motwation.—One of the marked values of the unified pro- 
gram, entered directly from the secondary schools, is that it 
capitalizes the student’s natural motivation. To keep the 
student longer away from studies which bear on his life pur- 
poses tends to prolong a juvenile attitude toward education 
at a time when he needs to learn the method of intensive, 
directed effort. | 

3. Scientific Grounding—Mathematies and physical sci- 
ences are an organic part of the engineering curriculum and 


10 _ REPORT OF THE BOARD OF 


not mere formal prerequisites to be ‘‘ passed off.’’ The build- 
ing up of these foundations in an unbroken sequence is one 
of the most essential conditions of effective engineering edu- 
cation. There is need for a more thorough mastery of these 
subjects and for greater facility in their use as tools than are 
considered requisite for college students in general. The 
engineering student, as a type, learns principles best in con- 
junction with their applications, a condition which would not 
obtain in the divided program. 

4. Sequences of Studres.—Effective sequence of essential sci- 
entific and technological studies requires four consecutive 
years; it does not occupy them fully, however, and affords 
time for a parallel sequence of humanistic studies, which gain 
from the student’s advancing maturity and add to his insight 
into the broader social implications of technology. In the 
divided curriculum cultural studies lose in significance through 
being dissociated, and technological studies are likely to be 
crowded into a sequence too brief for the best results. 

0. Adaptation of Program to Varying Needs.—Programs 
of engineering education of varying length and character are 
needed to fit different requirements. For the present, it may 
be impracticable, to set apart different types of institutions 
to serve these several ends, and the engineering colleges may 
need to approximate to them by a program of adjustable 
length. The unified plan, with humanistic, scientific and 
technological studies distributed through the curriculum in 
continuous sequences, lends itself to these purposes. 

6. Time Economy.—The advantages of time economy are 
all on the side of the unified program, which affords greater 
assurance of close articulation of preparatory studies and col- 
lege work and of purposeful and intensive effort than can be 
expected in a non-engineering college. Unless a pre-engineer- 
ing curriculum is given over very largely to scientific prepara- 
tion, at least five years in all will be required to accomplish 
the present ends. 

7. Advanced Studies.—The unified program affords a clear 
distinction between undergraduate and post-graduate work. 
The divided program, however, requires a longer period to 


INVESTIGATION AND COORDINATION ll 


accomplish the same ends, thereby tending to confuse de- 
ferred undergraduate studies with real advanced work and 
lessening the margin of time and the incentive to pursue it. 
When undergraduate and advanced studies are clearly sep- 
arated, there is greater probability that students will seek 
out special centers of advanced work for the sake of excep- 
tional facilities, a condition that deserves to be encouraged. 

8. Educational Demand.—There is a large and wholly legiti- 
mate demand for technological education of moderate length 
and exactions. It is important to strengthen and extend the 
base of technological education through larger development of 
a system of training of high quality but of intensive character 
aiming at fairly immediate utility, such as are now provided 
by a small group of non-collegiate schools. It is important to 
stabilize on the undergraduate level a considerable majority of 
the present engineering colleges founded to make and keep 
technical education accessible to the great body of the public. 
Failure to do so will lend encouragement to proprietary schools 
of dubious quality and to institutions which subordinate in- 
tellectual ideals to welfare motives. 

9. Transition of Graduates to Actwe LIife—Experience in- 
dicates clearly that it is bad for morale to delay too long the 
adjustment to practical life or to make the transition from a 
highly intellectual type of college program to a necessarily 
rudimentary experience too violent. There is a definite pos- 
sibility of keeping many promising men too long in college. 
These considerations apply with less force to men entering 
upon an individual professional status or work of a research 
character, but engineering colleges cannot limit themselves to 
such groups. To do so would break contact with the normal 
operating functions of industry and public works, from which 
most of the increase of demand for graduates bids fair to come. 

Summary of Argument.—The unified plan of engineering 
education has valid historical sanctions, is firmly fixed in 
status, and is consistent with the objectives of the engineering 
colleges; it makes the most of the student’s motivation, aids 
in the try-out of his educational and professional choices, and 
lends itself to adjustments of program to fit individual needs; 


i REPORT OF THE BOARD OF 


it fits into the requirements of the public and industry and 
makes for time economy; it exercises a wholesome influence 
on secondary education and insures the requisite sequence of 
studies; and it subtracts nothing vital from the cultural ideals 
of education, but affords opportunity for a closer linking up 
of cultural and vocational interests. The circumstances which 
led to the adoption of the divided plan in other branches of 
professional training are almost wholly lacking in the case of 
engineering, A general abandonment of the present unified 
program would bea disrupting influence in educational organi- 
zation and would have little support from the engineering pro- 
fession. There has been no demonstration of the superiority 
of the divided plan on either cultural or technical grounds, 
when programs of equal total length are compared; and no 
convincing case has been made for its general adoption. 

Defense of engineering education as a unified process should 
not be mistaken as a plea for uniformity. There is no inherent 
reason why all engineering colleges should be organized on the 
same plan or offer similar programs of studies. Standardized 
uniformity is sterile, but diversity makes for progress which 
is more often spread through experiment and example than 
imposed through mass movements. A comparison of engi- 
neering curricula of the unified type with present curricula in 
medicine and dentistry indicates that the engineering colleges 
enjoy greater freedom from standardization. Local cireum- 
stances may make a division between the engineering curricu- 
lum and the introductory general studies advantageous in 
particular institutions and it is well that the plan should be 
fully tried out. The actual trials thus far made have not 
achieved assured success and the more notable advances of 
recent years have been achieved in institutions which maintain 
a unified program. 


PART II. THE QUESTION OF A LONGER ENGINEERING 
CURRICULUM 

Past and Present Experience.—The four-year undergradu- 

ate engineering curriculum has been the dominant type of 

program in the American engineering colleges for eighty years. 


INVESTIGATION AND COORDINATION 13 


Efforts to establish longer regular programs have been made at 
intervals by a number of institutions of prominence, but have 
either been given up or have persisted with precarious suc- 
cess. Among the institutions which have tried and discarded 
longer curricula are Harvard, which maintained for eight 
years a Graduate School of Applied Science, Missouri, Wis- 
eonsin, California, Princeton, and Minnesota. Excepting cer- 
tain special cases * there are but three institutions at present 
which actually maintain programs of more than four years 
as their principal practice. Dartmouth and Columbia admit 
the student to the engineering college after three years of 
work in arts, and credit one year in engineering toward the 
arts degree. The course in engineering proper is three years 
in Columbia and two in Dartmouth, and leads in both cases 
to the degree of ‘‘Engineer.’’. Columbia, however, now offers 
an alternative plan whereby the degree of B.S. may be gained 
in four years and one summer. Northwestern gives its entire 
program of five years under the direction of the engineering 
college and awards the B.S. degree at the end of the fourth 
year, so that its practice differs only nominally from that of 
the eighty-one institutions which offer advanced work for 
graduates on an optional basis. There is therefore but one 
institution, 1.e., Dartmouth, other than certain cooperative 
schools, where the first degree in engineering cannot be gained 
in a four-year period, and that institution has enrolled of late 
but ten to twelve engineering students per year. 

Seventeen institutions have definitely scheduled combined 
courses in arts and engineering of more than four years’ dura- 
tion, offered as an alternative to the regular undergraduate 
engineering program. In a number of cases combined pro- 
grams are set up through an affiliation of two institutions. 
The proportion of students enrolled under this plan is rela- 
tively small. A considerable number of students voluntarily 

* Eleven institutions have cooperative undergraduate programs ex- 
tending over more than four years. Four colleges have a five-year pro- 
gram in one department and four-year programs in all others. One of- 


fers five-year programs for the degree of ‘‘Engineer’’ paralleling its 
four-year programs for the bachelor’s degree. 


14 REPORT OF THE BOARD OF 


enter engineering colleges on advance standing from arts col- 
leges, without a formal articulation of curricula, and many 
engineering colleges encourage this type of extended program. 

Aims of Longer Curricula.—The efforts to establish longer 
required programs have aimed principally to advance the 
standards of engineering education on its humanisti¢ and sci- 
entific sides, rather than to extend the technical instruction 
to a more advanced level, except in graduate schools. The 
institutions concerned have acted individually ; no concerted 
effort to introduce a longer curriculum as a general practice 
has yet been attempted. The nearest approach to such action 
was taken by representatives of fourteen mid-western institu- 
tions in 1922, and set forth in the following resolution: 


“In order to meet the constantly enlarging responsibilities of 
the engineering profession, we favor an advance in engineering 
education at this time that shall provide five years of collegiate 
training for those engineering students whose aim is to become 
qualified to take positions as the creative leaders in the profession, 
and that such advance shall be made in substantial accordance 
with the following plan: 

“1. Include in the four-year engineering curricula a substantial 
proportion of fundamental and humanistic subjects, omitting if 
necessary a sufficient amount of the more advanced technical work. 
It is desirable that, as far as possible, the curricula in the different 
branches of engineering shall be sufficiently uniform to permit stu- 
dents to defer their final choice of a specialty at least to the end 
of the second year. 

“2. Add a fifth year of advanced work, mostly or wholly tech- 
nical, and specialized to such an extent as desired. 

‘3. The first four years of work shall lead to a bachelor’s de- 
gree and the fifth year to an advanced degree in engineering.” 


Advanced Studies.—As stated above a large proportion of 
the engineering colleges offer advanced work following the 
completion of the regular undergraduate program. Almost 
without exception these institutions regard their four-year 
programs as normal and the fifth year as a period of post- 
graduate study. In some of these institutions, and notably 
in a few, the number of graduate students has been increasing 
steadily. There were almost exactly 1000 graduate students 
of engineering enrolled in American colleges in 1924-25. This 
number is between ten and twelve per cent of the total of 
first degrees in engineering awarded at the end of the preced- 
ing academic year. Sixteen institutions awarded a total of 
o72 graduate degrees in engineering in 1924-25. Since that 
time the number of graduate students of engineering has in- 


INVESTIGATION AND COORDINATION 15 


creased appreciably. More than three-fourths of the present 
graduate enrollment is in ten institutions, pointing to a tend- 
ency to migrate to the stronger schools for special advantages 
at this stage. 

Difficulties with Longer Curricula.—It has been the gen- 
eral experience that longer formal curricula have lacked the 
drawing power needed to insure a satisfactory numerical sue- 
cess; they have not attracted adequate groups of students in 
competition with normal undergraduate curricula in the same 
institutions or in others of equal rank. While these efforts 
have been made by distinguished institutions, there has been 
no instance where the superiority of teaching personnel or 
physical facilities associated with a longer curriculum has 
been so marked as to be the determining influence in the re- 
sult. Moreover, it does not appear that efforts were made to 
assure strong moral or material backing for these experiments 
from the engineering professions and industries. Had these 
conditions been met, the outcome might have been different, 
but the fact remains that longer curricula have not succeeded 
in gaining a firm position on the strength of inherent su- 
periority as an educational process. 

There is a widespread desire among educators to provide 
a superior preparation, beyond the possibilities of a four-year 
curriculum, for students who give promise of developing into 
leaders of engineering and industry, but there appears to be 
little demand for a longer scholastic program for the average 
student. Many of the proposals for longer formal programs 
are assumed to have a selective basis; they are intended to 
apply to students of superior ability or to institutions of a 
distinguished character. Difficulties arise, however, when at- 
tempting to make such a segregation by formal means. 

The tangible gains in providing a more extended training 
for selected men have been achieved largely on a voluntary 
basis and in institutions which maintain the normal subdivi- 
sion between undergraduate and post-graduate work. This 
gain has been made in about equal measure through the com- 
bining of courses in arts and in engineering on the student’s 
Own initiative, and through an increasing tendency to pursue 


16 REPORT OF THE BOARD OF 


post-graduate work. The admirable educational programs for 
graduates which have been developed by certain progressive 
industrial concerns have become important contributions to 
more extended education for selected men. The present tend- 
ency to associate these advanced courses in industry more 
closely with the graduate schools of the universities is a factor 
of large promise. These voluntary measures appear to be 
more successfully selective than any formal prescription for 
longer training, and to afford greater flexibility in fitting the 
educational progsam to individual needs. 

Policy Suggested.—In the judgment of the Board an under- 
graduate program does not constitute in itself an adequate 
preparation for many of the higher forms of engineering ac- 
tivity, but it embodies the foundation subjects which consti- 
tute the essential basis of engineering education for the great 
body of students. Up to a certain point, it is both necessary 
and advantageous to organize the curriculum in a limited num- 
ber of divisions which aim primarily at group needs, beyond 
that point it is essential that training should be highly diver- 
sified to meet the needs of individuals and of engineering re- 
quirements. The Board considers that the undergraduate 
program is as extended as can be given to good advantage to 
considerable groups of students and that further training 
should be largely diversified in length, type and setting. 
Furthermore, there is a need for many institutions to give 
thorough undergraduate instruction, but a relatively limited 
number of institutions with specialized facilities are needed 
for more advanced work. It would be wholly unfortunate to 
invite many substantial undergraduate institutions to inflate 
their programs, by setting up the standard of a five or six year 
engineering curriculum as a measure of educational respecta- 
bility and standing. 

When all factors in the situation are considered, it seems 
desirable to recognize the distinction between undergraduate 
and post-graduate work in engineering as normal, to encour- 
age many institutions to offer the former and relatively fewer 
the latter type of instruction, to plan the undergraduate cur- 


INVESTIGATION AND COORDINATION 17 


riculum so that it may serve as a terminal program for the 
average student, to make an extension of this program optional 
with the student, and to encourage the student of promise to 
extend his formal training, either through the vountary elec- 
tion of additional courses in humanistic subjects before or 
during the engineering curriculum, or through post-graduate 
study in a fully qualified institution, or through orderly 
studies pursued in connection with engineering experience. 
The commonest exceptions to the normal four-year program 
will occur in cooperative courses, where the undergraduate 
curriculum is spread over a longer period, and in programs 
which combine two distinct curricula, such as arts and engi- 
neering, engineering and business administration, and the 
like. 

Undergraduate Curricula.—In accepting the four-year un- 
dergraduate program as a norm and a more extended program 
as optional, certain principles deserve to be recognized and 
stated : 

1. The four-year curriculum should constitute an acceptable 
terminal program for the large body of students who wish a 
general engineering training, and properly leads to a bache- 
lor’s degree. In many cases the undergraduate program may 
be divided advantageously into two stages, each reasonably 
self-contained, in order to provide an intermediate goal and to 
facilitate selective admission to the upper stage. 

2. Students registered in the undergraduate engineering 
curriculum should have the privilege of extending the pro- 
gram to five years by the election of additional humanistic 
and scientific subjects, preferably in the later years of the 
course. 

3. Since a four-year program provides primarily a gen- 
eral foundation training for engineering, a high degree of 
differentiation of undergraduate curricula by technical or 
functional specialties is inadvisable. A primary differentia- 
tion according to the major branches of the engineering pro- 
fession, supplemented by group options in the fourth year, is 
considered appropriate. There should be little or no differen- 
tiation in the first year, and a final choice within groups of 


18 REPORT OF THE BOARD OF 


closely related curricula should remain open to the end of the 
second year. 

4. A longer undergraduate curriculum may be offered ap- 
propriately for students of good general promise who are 
handicapped by incomplete mathematical and scientific prep- 
aration, especially where the engineering colleges are obligated 
by their public relations to admit such students. In such 
cases the longer curriculum is supplementary and not a normal 
program ; it does not aim at a higher level of attainment and 
leads to the bachelor’s degree. | 

Post-Graduate Work.—The Board advises that students 
who are well above the average in general ability and who pur- 
pose to become qualified for creative engineering work should 
extend their studies through one or more graduate years, lead- 
ing to a higher degree. Such a program should be decided 
upon in the upper years of the undergraduate period rather 
than at its beginning. This additional work may well take 
one of three forms: 

1. An orderly curriculum of advanced studies in engineer- 
ing technique or administration, in any engineering college 
well staffed and equipped for engineering instruction on a 
high professional level. 

2. An elective resident program of advanced scientific studies 
and research in a graduate school; this type of program is 
appropriate only where notable staff and facilities are pro- 
vided in both engineering and scientific departments. 

3. A program of advanced professional study partly or 
wholly under industrial auspices, but preferable with organ- 
ized cooperation between the industry and a graduate school. 
of high rank. 

It is advised that a considerable number of the present 
engineering colleges confine their efforts to a sound under- 
graduate program and pursue the practice of directing their 
graduates to other institutions for advanced work. 


INVESTIGATION AND COORDINATION 19 


CONCLUSION 


In conclusion, it seems fitting to outline the Board’s con- 
ception of the place and function of the engineering colleges 
in the educational scheme and to indicate some of its ideals 
for their future progress. 

It is the Board’s belief that engineering education is so 
broad in its aims and that its methods are so truly educative 
as fully to justify its established position as one of the major 
complete branches of higher education. The engineering col- 
lege is conceived to be coordinate in organization and status 
with the college of liberal arts, in both undergraduate and 
post-graduate divisions. There is a clear-cut distinction, how- 
ever, in their purposes and their methods of work, which in- 
vests the engineering colleges with a professional character. 
The undergraduate engineering curriculum properly combines 
humanistic, scientific and technological studies into a coherent 
and integral program which is set off from a loose grouping 
of scientific studies by a well-marked professional orientation. 
The professional element in the curriculum becomes increas- 
ingly important in the upper years of the program and domi- 
nates the more specialized work of the post-graduate years. 

The Board recognizes the need to develop, broaden and en- 
rich engineering education, in view of the constantly enlarging 
responsibilities of engineers in society and the increasing ex- 
actions of professional practice. It holds, however, that this 
development should proceed from within, by enhancing the 
distinctive qualities of engineering education, rather than by 
adding to it unrelated elements from without; that the pres- 
ervation of a unified program better lends itself to this end; 
that it is desirable to give a more generous place to distinctly 
humanistic studies in the curriculum and to give these studies 
a form and content * which will enrich the student’s concep- 
tion of engineering and its place in social economy; that it is 
desirable to give the student a more connected and better 

*It is the expectation that the Board will deal with the form and 


content of the humanistic studies of the engineering curriculum in a 
later section of its reports. 


20 REPORT OF THE BOARD 


grounding in engineering principles; that a greater effort 
should be made to develop the student’s capacity for self-di- 
rected work; and that these ends should be gained, wherever 
need be, at the expense of unrelated studies on one hand and 
of detailed technical training on the other. The Board holds 
that detailed training in engineering technique should be 
more adequately provided for in both post-graduate and post- 
scholastic courses. 

The Board holds that its principal efforts for the improve- 
ment of engineering education must take the direction of a 
simpler and better balanced curriculum, better selection of 
students, better qualified teachers, better teaching methods, 
better subject matters and more adequate provision for ad- 
vanced training, rather than changes in the scheme of educa- 
tional organization. 


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PRICE-LIST FOR BULLETINS AND REPORTS 


The following Bulletins and Reports have been published 
and may be obtained from the Lancaster Press at the prices 
indicated. 


Number 1. Engineering Students at the Time of Entrance 


to College. 20 cents. 
Number 2. Admissions and Eliminations of Engineering 
Students. 20 cents. 
Number 3. Engineering Graduates and WNon-Graduate 
Former Students. 20 cents, 
Number 4. Engineering Teaching Personnel. 20 cents. 
Number 5. Supplementary Activities of Engineering Col- 
leges. 15 cents 
Number 6. Costs of Engineering Education. 15 cents. 
Number 7. Engineering Degrees. 15 cents. 


Number 8. A Study of a Group of Electrical Engineering 
Graduates. 15 cents. 


Number 9. A Summary of Opinions Concerning Engineer- 
ing Curricula. 20 cents. 


Number 10. A Study of Engineering Curricula. 40 cents. 


Number 11. A Study of Evolutionary Trends in Engineer- 


ing Curricula. 20 cents. 
Number 12. A Study of the Cooperative Method of Engi- 
neering EHducation. 30 cents. 

zs & * 


Preliminary Report of the Board of Investigation and Co- 
ordination. 20 cents. 


Second Report of the Board of Investigation and Coordina- 
tion. 15 cents. 


Preliminary Report of the Director. 15 cents. 


Summary of the Fact-Finding Stages of the Investigation. 
15 cents. 


LINO 


TN 


